Off his eleventh album Looking East, released in 1996, American rock singer-songwriter and musician Jackson Browne’s “The Barricades of Heaven” track remains a favorite among his fans.
The song is simply a masterpiece, with great guitar work and lyrics full of reminiscence. Browne routinely plays this song in concert, usually at the very beginning. So, what’s behind the song’s lyrics and what do they mean?
Lyrics
Let’s try to break down its lyrics and find meaning.
Running down around the towns along the shore
When I was sixteen and on my own
No, I couldnt tell you what the hell those brakes were for
I was just trying to hear my song
Browne grew up in Orange County, California, specifically in Fullerton and attending Sunny Hills High School. He began singing at local venues throughout Southern California.
Jimmy found his own sweet sound and won that free guitar
Wed all get in the van and play
Life became the paradox, the bear, the rouge et noir
And the stretch of road running to L.A.
Browne refers to a friend here. He had mentioned before that it was difficult to figure out which story to tell and even left out an entire verse about another friend named Michael because it “didn’t lead me where I wanted to go,” he said.
The Paradox, The Golden Bear, and Rouge et Noir are all clubs located in Orange County (Tustin, Huntington Beach, and Seal Beach, respectively) that Browne played in his early years. Geographically, the freeway heads up north to Los Angeles. According to Browne, however, the song doesn’t have to be about growing up in Southern California.
“It’s just about the time in your life when you leave home and try to figure out how you’re going to be who you want to be,” he said recently in concert.
The chorus comes next, but let’s save that later. Onto the next verse.
All the world was shining from those hills
The stars above and the lights below
Among those there to test their fortunes and their wills
I lost track of the score long ago
Here, Browne is probably referring to Hollywood, or possibly the Fullerton area, which is also covered with hills. He and others test their wills to try to be successful and famous in what they do, making it into sort of a competition. Browne “lost track” of all of it, he sometimes substitutes “score” for “them all” in concert, choosing to stay away from a materialistic or egotistical life and instead pursuing his dreams.
After that, there’s another verse here and then an altered chorus. They’ll be explained next.
Interview
In 2005, Austin, Texas radio station 107.1 KGSR conducted an interview with Jackson Browne. He was asked about the meaning of the song’s chorus line:
Pages turning
Pages we were years from learning
Straight into the night our hearts were flung
Better bring your own redemption when you come
To the barricades of heaven where I’m from
“This song sort of marks the beginning of my infatuation with ambiguity,” Browne said. “I used to really be so fastidious about saying exactly what I meant, and in a way that it could not be misinterpreted. What I realized, of course, is that that doesn’t prevent people from interpreting every which way, anyway. So this is a song — I love the ambiguity of it — it raises more questions that it answers. But that’s what I want to do. And that’s what songs are supposed to do, I think. Songs are supposed to engage the listening and the listener of a song provides their own imagery and their own context and their own meaning for a song.”
“The Barricades of Heaven raises all kinds of questions. By what, the barricades that keep us out or the barricades that protect those who do live in heaven from like an onslaught of some kind? Or the barricades, when we do encounter barricades, they’re generally like police barricades. I sometimes think of it in terms of places that would be heaven, were they peaceful. Or that would be heaven were they not despoiled. The barricades of heaven, it could mean a number of things. But, to me, it’s generally referring to some place — some contested version of the ideal world. I mean, heaven for some people is like a big flat screen TV and a satellite dish and a big barbeque. And heaven for other people is a warm, clean place to sleep. And these version of heaven are various versions of what heaven would be were we to be able to encounter it on earth. Varied, depending on what they have and what they expect from this life.”
“But for me, if I’m really talking about where I’m from and where I’m singing about it in that song is Orange County, California. Like growing up in Orange County, I was — like if you were a freak, it was really serious business. You had to keep your ears sort of vigilantly listening for the sound of squealing tires and you know, to be a long-haired freak in Orange County was what I imagined it to be like. I one time asked Duane Allman what it was like to be a freak in the South. And he said, you’ve got to run every now and then in order to protect yourself occasionally. But Orange County was like a world away from Hollywood, where there all kinds of freaks.”
“Still, I joined CORE, the Congress of Racial Equality. I took part in all kinds of civil rights demonstrations and anti-war demonstrations in the ’60s. And I guess that’s what I meant. I think that this world would be heaven, but that it’s what kind of heaven and for whom is what’s really being contested at all times. So the barricades, I think of them as battlements. I think of them as moral and ethical battles taking place in our lives every day.”
The interviewer responds, “That’s why you have to bring your own redemption.”
“And you have to do those things that will — I mean, I once tried to explain to a Japanese interpreter what I meant by redemption and found out I don’t think that they really have — they don’t have the Christian context of redemption and the fall and everything to help explain that idea,” Browne replies. “But redemption is just a very general term of course. For me, it’s a very general, secular term, to do with, like, finding what’s valuable and redeeming that from the rest of this, the detritus of a very compromised, moral and ethical landscape. I mean, I can remember the first time someone showed me a pornographic photograph. I think I was about 12. But you can walk down the street and these little boxes that vend pornography on every corner. And like any kid’s got a quarter to buy this stuff. And yet, most of the kids I know are completely unsullied by any kind of exposure to the adult version of what is elicit and what is racy and exciting. Maybe that comes later or maybe they will somehow pass unscathed through the — I mean, turns out to be determined by other things, I guess, not just whether or not your eyes pop open at the sight of some illicit sexual image. But I don’t know. Like I say, the whole question of what redeems you and what is heaven gets raised in the song, and it’s more for the listener to grapple with.”
According to Browne, that’s really the pivotal part of “The Barricades of Heaven.”
“I mean, that’s the one thing that’s sort of like a door that just, you know, you pass through and it leads you to the whole song,” he said.
Here’s that last verse before the final chorus:
Childhood comes for me at night
Voices of my friends
Your face bathing me in light
Hope that never ends
Browne explains, “And also what it means, it could also mean that when you’re young and you join a band, it’s your chance to make the world right, and to describe the world in terms that you want to see it described in. And that’s all it really means, too. It’s like what it means to be young and want to drive around playing your songs and finding out what — I mean, I lifted a wonderful line from a wonderful — a poem too, just the image of your face bathing me in light. The sound of your childhood friends, like the sound of the voice of a friend. These are the sort of things that real happiness and security are made out of. I like the image. I actually began living with an abstract artist, a conceptual artist and somebody that loves abstract painting and stuff. And I just began seeing the world in a completely different — see, that’s also not a song from when I was 16. It’s about when I was 16.”
Pages Turning
The final chorus is slightly different:
Pages turning
Pages torn and pages burning
Faded pages, open in the sun
Better bring your own redemption when you come
To the barricades of heaven where I’m from.
Better bring your own redemption when you come
To the barricades of heaven where I’m from.
Besides the doubling of the “Better bring your own redemption…” lines, the pages are now torn, burning, and faded. This could symbolize Browne’s forgotten experiences, with more memories fading into the past.
Check out Top 10 Jackson Browne Songs for more. Can you guess what topped that list?
Sources:
Jackson Browne. Wikipedia.
The Barricades of Heaven Lyrics. LyricsFreak.
Mark Bego, Jackson Browne: His Life and Music. Google Books.
Jody Denberg, Interview with Jackson Browne. 107.1 KGSR Radio Austin.
Phillip White, Top 10 Jackson Browne Songs. Associated Content.
